Michael Webb was possibly the most original and inventive member of the London-based Archigram group who were startling the architectural world in the 1960's. After studying at Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster), Webb left for the USA where he has taught at Virginia and Rhode Island, and now at Columbia and Cooper Union. All the while he was writing and drawing, doing exhibitions and dreaming up far-fetched schemes.
He delighted, he says, in "the sensuality of drawing and of touching the surface of paper and of using beautiful tools". So it came as a shock when he was asked by MoCA/LA to make computer animations of some of his projects for an exhibition in 1997. Yet once the inherent possibilities became apparent, he was interested. His far-fetched schemes ("wacky" he has called them) could now be explored from all angles, and as though in movement. They could be developed further. And they are questioning "the continuing validity of the house and the office and the car and the super market as separate elements" and "our reading of geographic spaces".
He shows three imagined houses. He also turns perspective theory on its head.
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